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Friday, 13 May 2016

A nation’s higher education system reflects the ideological and
political institutional mainstream as a whole. This has been the case since the
founding of universities in the late Middle Ages (University
of Bologna, 1088; University of Paris, c.1150; University of
Oxford (1167); even earlier for Arab universities (University of
al-Qarawiyyin, 859; Al-Azhar University, 970). To this day, universities
reflect society’s value capitalist system, prevalent ideological and political
trends rooted in neoliberal thinking that dominates the political economy. The
question is whether the neo-liberal model of higher education best serves
individual students and society collectively or merely large businesses.

Based on the cosmopolitan ideals of the Age of Reason, the Humboldtian Model of Higher Education -
named after Prussian philosopher and diplomat Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1767-1835 -
endeavored to forge teaching and research in the arts, sciences and humanities
for the broader purpose of general knowledge both theoretical and applied. The
Industrial Revolution necessitated education at all levels including university
level in order to expand. Therefore, the modern university became a necessary
instrument to serve industrial capitalism’s needs (drivers of innovation where
basic research and development took place).

It stands to reason that the most
thriving capitalist country, the United States with the world’s largest economy
in nominal value at least, would have the best universities both private and
public, especially land-grant colleges that started in 1862 under the Morrill
Act. Although such schools started with the purpose of indeed buttressing the
economy by creating an educated work force, they reflected an apartheid society
considering that it was not until the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the
Education Amendment of 1972 that minorities, women and lower income whites had
access to these institutions that were mostly for white middle class males.

In the early 21st century the problem is not one of access based on race
and gender but rather class because of the commoditization of higher education
model prevalent in the US and exported worldwide. Considering the number of
US-affiliated colleges and university extensions overseas, but the degree to
which non-US universities try to emulate the commoditized model, many around
the world accept the commoditized neoliberal model of American higher education
as the very best possible.

It is indeed true that the US has some of the world’s best universities,
especially graduate schools if not so as much at the undergraduate level. It is
just as true that since the end of the Vietnam War American higher education
has become increasingly unaffordable and divided into the top tier schools with
many at the bottom providing low-quality in-class or online education at a very
high cost. This too is a reflection of broader societal trends such as downward
socioeconomic mobility and good education as a commodity reserved for wealthy
families.

Excluding loans, the federal government provides a mere 2% of the budget
for higher education, despite a sharp decrease in spending by states since
2008. If we consider the federal student loan program estimated at $170 billion
in the next ten years, the cost is still negligible given that the US has
proposed foreign military aid of $40 billion to Israel for that same ten-year
period; money devoted to continue the repression against the Palestinian people.
Two-thirds of American college students graduate with
college debt that currently stands at$1.3 trillion. In an economy of $17.5
trillion GDP, this is an enormous burden that has been rising commensurately
with the average household debt over the last three decades.Approximately 43% the student debt is not
paid in regular payments and it is estimated that because of the absence of
jobs about 20% will probably never repay the loans. This would then leave
the federal government with the burden of the guaranteed bank loans. Because the
US economy has been experiencing downward socioeconomic mobilization
concurrently with the massive rise in student debt and household debt in the
last ten years, the problem was inevitable.

The position of the majority of the politicians is to do nothing, other
than have universities raise endowments for scholarship money and force
universities to depend even more on tuition and the private sector. However, as
Warren Buffett recently noted, the university where he serves as a board member
raised its endowment from $8 million to $1 billion but kept tuition at high
levels instead of lowering it and it did nothing about improving. As we will
see below, doing nothing about the current neoliberal model has many negative
consequences for society both domestically and globally.

Another option to fix a broken system is to cut the multi-million dollar
costs of the top-heavy administration in universities where presidents, vice
presidents, chancellors, vice chancellors, and deans have compensation packages
as though they are executives in the private sector. The salary gap between a
university president and an adjunct English professor is almost as wide as a
worker and a corporate CEO. Clearly, the overhead costs of the bureaucratized universities
entails that student tuition is unaffordable for the working class and the
weakened middle class. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/income-inequality-in-higher-education-the-college-president-to-adjunct-pay-ratio/407029/

Another option to fix the costs in higher education is to go tuition
free. This is a proposal that Senator Bernie Sanders floated as part of his
neo-Keynesian presidential platform that includes free health care for all
Americans. This of course means putting an end to the neoliberal model. His
reasoning is that students are punished for going to college. They come out
with massive debt to start their lives in a job market that is hardly favorable
to the majority of them. Considering that a college degree is roughly
equivalent today to a High School degree in the 1950s-1960s when the US economy
was growing and there was upward socioeconomic mobility, what purpose does the
unaffordable tuition serve other than to keep college the domain of the wealthy
or those willing to go deep into debt?

This is a question not just about economics and raising taxes of the
rich to pay tuition of the poor. The fact is that the system already favors the
wealthy and it is stacked against the lower class. This is an issue of social
justice considering that the federal government and states have no problem
providing billions of dollars in corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the
richest Americans and setting aside a massive budget for defense, intelligence
and homeland security and very little for human welfare. This is an issue of
values, just like the blatantly racist criminal justice system that punishes
the petty thief or small time drug dealer in the inner city, but rewards the
bank executive whose bank had been laundering drug money, fixing rates, engaged
in inside trading, etc.

The Rising Cost of
Higher Education

From 1978
until 2012 the increase in tuition and fee was 1,120%. An increase far above
the level of inflation that generally ranges in the single digits represents a
crisis in the cost structure of colleges and universities. Assuming a rise of
just 7% between 2016 and 2030, the average annual cost for a public university
will be $58,000, or $232,000 for a four-year degree. For a family with two
children, this means the cost will be around the half-a-million dollar mark,
and the difference between owning a home or sending the children to college and
sinking them into debt when they graduate.

Since the
Great Recession of 2008 states have slashed spending on higher education to
raise corporate subsidies and provide more tax breaks for upper income groups.
The result has been college affordability in 45 out of the 50 states has
decreased for the average household which has seen a drop in its income during
the same period. This means that households under $30,000 must devote 60% of
their income to educate a college age teenager at a two-year college, while
those between $40,000 and $100,000 (middle class) need 76% for a four-year
college. In short, a very difficult choice for the average American family that
must ask whether an undergraduate degree really means much in the workforce of
today.http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/04/29/when-it-comes-college-costs-middle-class-kids-are-still-screwed

One could
argue that a college education is well worth investment not only in terms of
securing higher paying jobs in the future but because the quest for knowledge
about the world and self discovery are very basic to human nature and society.
Moreover, education goes to the core of a society’s claim to maintaining a
merit-based system by developing the most creative minds that benefit the
totality through the individual.If
higher education is a mirror of society as well as the source for progress, is
it time to consider new models other than the existing corporate one that will
best serve society and not just a very narrow segment linked to the corporate
structure? A few voices including that of Bernie Sanders and his supporters
agree the time has come for a new model of higher education. However, the
entrenched business, political and media elites are adamantly against change.
Interestingly enough, these elites are allies among highly paid administrators who have a
vested interest in maintaining the existing system.

Political Resistance to Changing the Neoliberal
Model of Higher Education

The neoliberal
ideology that took hold during the Reagan administration in society impacted
higher education because government at all levels adopted a policy of
transferring income from social programs, mental hospitals and education to
corporate welfare through various subsidies and tax reductions. At the state
level, governors and legislatures began seeking ways to reduce their
allocations to public colleges and universities, forcing them to seek funds
from the private sector. This entailed that they would have to emulate the
private sector in everything from ideology to structure and at the same time serve
its needs rather than carry out work independently.

Not just the
governance structure of higher education, but endowed chairs and entire
departments or even colleges would be created to reflect the millionaire or
billionaire donors’ wishes.Everything
from hiring faculty to reflect the neoliberal ideological orientation to setting
priorities that link the institution to local and national businesses changed
because of the inexorable relationship between university and the donors. Most
college presidents and university top administrators serve on boards of local
and national businesses, and they are as themselves business people and
politicians rather than academics. In some cases, top administrators are as
alien to academia as the local bank executive hobnobbing with the mayor,
governor and congressmen.

Higher
education has been reduced to a business and the administration views itself as
such and students as customers as thought they are shopping for a new cell
phone. No candidate of either party has dared to go along with Sanders’
proposal, although there is no shortage of those on the Democrat side promising
“something must be done” but within the neoliberal corporate model that exists
today. Politicians who raise money from wealthy donors for election and
reelection are not interested in facing their benefactors to explain higher
taxes to fund higher education. Higher education is a political issue in so far
as politicians decide where it fits in as far as a national priority. It is
hardly a secret that both political parties have national
defense/terrorism/homeland security as a top priority followed by retaining the
corporate welfare system.

Between 9/11
and the end of 2015 the US had spent $4.4 trillion on the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, various interventions in Libya and Syria, the war on terror and
homeland security. During that same decade-and-a-half, the corporate tax
subsidies from state and local governments cost $80 billion annually, while
Export-Import subsidies cost an additional $112 billion. The combined corporate
welfare program costs $1.5 trillion annually, but both political parties are
committed to it as a national priority whereas higher education is a low
priority. Just as the state government in Michigan had as a priority providing
a tax break of $1 billion to the richest residents even if that meant cutting
costs in the Flint water supply, similarly state and federal government have
corporate welfare as a priority over higher education. http://usuncut.com/class-war/10-corporate-welfare-programs-that-will-make-your-blood-boil/

Although the
Sanders plan would cover about 70% of college students, and it would cost an
estimated $75 billion annually split between the federal government and the States,
Republicans and most Democrats find this plan reprehensible because it calls
for a new tax on Wall Street speculation. It must be stressed that the Federal
government makes an estimated $11 billion profit annually from student loans. In
short, the media has no problem with Wall Street speculation, higher defense
costs and higher corporate welfare costs, but it decries free tuition for
public colleges and universities. A number of prominent university professors
on the payroll of corporations including media companies have come out in
opposition to ending the neoliberal model arguing that free tuition would: a.
stifle innovation and creativity; b. undermine private colleges and
universities; c. too much government involvement in higher education would
impede entrepreneurship in higher education; d. deprive people of “freedom of
choice; and e. free tuition will necessarily mean that quality suffers. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/05/27/why-bernie-sanders-free-public-college-plan-is-a-bad-idea ;

Presenting
itself as America’s premier newspaper and supposedly liberal, the New York Times came out against free
tuition because: “free tuition means
fewer resources to teach students. Unintended consequences could include
reductions in need-based financial aid, which would harm the low- and
middle-income students free tuition is meant to help.”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/opinion/free-tuition-is-not-the-answer.html?_r=0 Oblivious to the current $1.3
trillion in student debt expected to rise sharply by 2030, the media insists
that higher education must not become a national priority. After all, the
majority of both Republicans and Democrats agree with Wall Street that the
economy cannot afford free tuition when it has already set its priorities in
the domain of defense and corporate welfare. Along with politicians, the media
is silent when it comes to the for-profit online unaccredited colleges and
universities that government subsidizes by providing subsidies for low-quality
to dubious educational experience for students.

It makes sense
that corporate and business opposition in general would be forthcoming on this
issue for a number of reasons. First, the businesses would lose the influence
they currently enjoy over universities in every matter from curriculum to
faculty and top administrators running the university on the existing
commoditized model. When the most important function of its administration is
to raise money rather than deliver a good education the question arises about
the hold that the wealthy donors have on the university either by request or
because the university is obligated to cater to the corporate ideological
framework.

Just as
millionaires and billionaires have a hold on the political arena because they
finance campaigns and control the media that provides coverage to politicians,
similarly hundreds of millions have been flowing into universities from Koch
brothers and other billionaires and millionaires wishing to influence what is
otherwise academic freedom.

Most of the donations to universities go to the
already wealthy private institutions, but almost always with conditions that
determine everything from curriculum to hiring and program development. “In Kentucky, Papa John’s pizza founder John
Schnatter teamed up with the Koch Brothers Foundation to fund business school
programmes at the University of Louisville and at the University of Kentucky.
Both donations came with the caveat that the donors can stop funding if they do
not feel that their mission – the teaching of free market economics and
business practices – is being carried out to their satisfaction. To some, such
stipulations imply that students will be taught by professors sympathetic to
the political and economic views of the donors.”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/phil-knight-nike-stanford-universities-billionaire-donate-a6894716.html

In the past
forty years, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained about the same, although
the corporate model has meant relying increasingly on part time faculty. This
reflects the corporate model of relying of low-paying part time employees and
avoiding the costs of fulltime people. During the same forty-year period of a
rise in part-time faculty, there has been an astronomical rise in the
administrative bureaucracy that deals with the university as a business and injects
a corporate ideology into an otherwise non-profit institution of higher
learning. The least educated and most opportunistic elements invariably wind up
in administration positions that pay much higher than any faculty position. Administrators
identity and self-interest is not with the students but with the business
community and they in turn project that value system into the university. (Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University
and why it Matters. 2011); http://www.salon.com/2014/10/10/noam_chomsky_corporate_business_models_are_hurting_american_universities_partner/

Corporatization of the University and College
Administration

It makes sense that private
colleges would object to ending the neoliberal model and supporting Sanders because
they would have to reduce tuition and costs. Of course, the wealthy that would
rarely consider a public school in the first place will continue to attend
private colleges. Moreover, the free tuition of public schools would permit the
private schools to promise they are the elite. Representing 1000 private
universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
(NAICU) opposes Sanders’ proposal despite its acknowledgement that costs are
very high.

“But one of the things we very firmly believe is that as it has been for
the last 50 years or so, that federal aid money must follow the student, and
stay with the student.” In other words, do what you will with public schools, as long as
federal and state funds also flow into private schools based on student choice.
“There is no trend we can discern yet
that suggests schools are going to start cutting back on the amounts of money
that they need for the expanding services they offer. There may be a decrease
in growth if tuition increases, but nobody is decreasing tuition, nobody is
decreasing the number of services offered, and therefore schools are
continually getting more expensive.” http://dailyfreepress.com/2015/09/11/private-college-presidents-hesitant-on-sanders-education-stance/

In every state where there is a major corporation its influence is
heavily felt very clearly on the state institutions. Whether it is Eli Lilly in
Indiana or 3-M in Minnesota, the influence of the long arm of the corporate
world in ubiquitous in universities that fight amongst themselves to secure
corporate funding no matter the cost to academic freedom.Not just humanities and social sciences
faculty, but those in the “hard sciences” are constantly fighting to secure
grants for their research and as government slashed National Science Foundation
money (16% cut proposed for 2016), faculty look to corporations. Scientists
depend on the agrichemicals, pharmaceutical and biotech industry for research funding,
so they structure their research around what the corporation expects.http://www.livingbetter.org/livingbetter/articles/corporate.html; http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/house-spending-panel-does-its-best-hide-large-cut-nsf-social-and-geosciences-research

In his article entitled “Higher Education or Education for Hire?
Corporatization and the Threat to Democratic Thinking”, Joel Wetheimer writes:“The
effects of corporatization on the integrity of university research – especially
in the sciences – has been well-documented elsewhere. Readers of Academic Matters are likely familiar with the many
cases of scientific compromise resulting from private commercial sponsorship of
research by pharmaceutical and tobacco companies. Indeed, faculty throughout
North America are already deluged with requests or demands to produce research
that is “patentable” or “commercially viable.”http://www.academicmatters.ca/2010/04/higher-education-or-education-for-hire-corporatization-and-the-threat-to-democratic-thinking/

A land grant school, the
University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana campus is one of many public
institutions heavily indebted to the private sector. Upon accepting massive
grants from agrichemical companies such as Monsanto, the university caters to
the wishes of the donors to hire faculty in the field of expertise the company
dictates, namely in genetically modified seeds and agrichemicals that would
have a direct impact on its multinational business. In other words, this is
just another very cheap way of outsourcing research and development. On the
surface, there appears to be nothing wrong with this, expect that this is a
public tax-supported institution whose work is geared to serve the corporation.
In short, the general taxpayer is indirectly subsidizing corporations.

As Wenonah Hauter,
executive director of Food & Water Watch put it: “Sound agricultural policy requires impartial and unbiased scientific
inquiry, but like nearly every aspect of our modern food system, land-grant
school funding has been overrun by narrow private interests….Private-sector
funding not only corrupts the public research mission of land-grant
universities, but also distorts the science that is supposed to help farmers
improve their practices and livelihoods,” said Hauter. “Industry-funded
academic research routinely produces favorable results for industry sponsors.
And since policymakers and regulators frequently cite these university studies
to back up their decision-making, industry-funded academic research
increasingly influences the rules that govern their business operations.” http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/public-research-private-gain-corporate-influence-over-university-agricultural-research

The highly paid university administrators urge faculty to forge closer
ties with the corporate world. They bring with them a corporate value system
and worldview intended to make the university an institution that models itself
after the corporate world. These leaders of the universities are among the most
adamant opponents of doing away with the neoliberal model. Catharine Bond Hill,
Vassar College president, a Clinton backer argued that Sanders is wrong to
propose free tuition for public colleges. There is a vast administrative
bureaucracy handling everything from loans to scholarships with layers of vice
chancellors and vice presidents in the larger universities. One concern that
college administrator have if the Sanders proposal goes through is the
inevitable cuts in the administrative bureaucracy that will not be needed to
deal with student loans, scholarships, and fundraising for student aid. From 1985 to 2005, the number of administrators rose by 85% and their
attendant staff by 240%.http://www.occupy.com/article/college-bureaucracy-how-education-forgot-students-and-became-business#sthash.G22kz58h.dpuf.
People assume that tuition goes for the direct
educational experience of the student. “This
is no longer the case. Instead, a large chunk of a check made out for tens of
thousands of dollars is feeding the burgeoning administrative staff on college
campuses.http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/04/mink-the-misguided-bureaucratization-of-higher-education)

The cozy relationship between the corporate world and college administrators
illustrates that the neoliberal model is not a theoretical construct but a
sinister reality.To university
administrators and board of trustees invariably serve on the boards of
businesses large and small. It may surprise the reader to discover that 42% of
the Board trustees at public universities come from large
corporations and they make the decisions about university governance and
direction.

There are those who insist that there is nothing with taxpayers subsidizing the rich and the coprorations any more than there is anything wrong with taxpayers subsidizing tax-exempt churches at a cost that some estimate between $70 to $80 billion annually. While many see no problem of the taxpayer subsidizing the lavish lifestyle of some of the wealthiest ministrers, they have a problem with free tuition. While many see no problem of the government paying between 15% and 350% in cost overruns to defense contractors, money that runs into the billions, excluding the corruption that is associated with such contracts. No matter the cost to society, who would dare propose ending the subsidies of churches and of corporations?

It is indeed amazing that the US model of higher education with all of
its problems is actually one that other countries are trying to emulate. Although
it has been cultural diffusion, especially the contributions of a global
academic talent that has made American Higher Education as productive as it has
since the end of WWII, many around the world and here in the US confuse this
catalyst to success with the neoliberal governance and operational structure. The
fact that high school students in Japan and many European countries actually score at
par with US college graduates is indicative that the high cost of US colleges
does not translate to better education. Graduation rates across the board are
in the mid-50s, and for the lower tiered schools in the low 20s and high teens.
Why is it that graduation rates are so low across the board, although tuition
and fees keep going higher and grade inflation is a reality driven mostly by an
administration that views students as paying customers? If the neoliberal model
of education is the best one possible why do we have such grim results?

Billions of dollars in endowments and funding for research from the
federal government and states allows the top universities mostly private to buy
the best academics in their respective fields. However, the pyramid structure
of American higher education suggests that the very few at the top, mostly
private with some public schools, enjoy the big money and reputation. Despite a
second tier with good departments in all fields from humanities to business,
the bottom of the pyramid is where most students attend and where the system
shows its cracks. It is at the bottom of the pyramid – The following are all for profit mostly online mostly
low-quality education that does not compare favorably to a state university and
does not have commensurate weight in the job market.

University of Phoenix at $35.5 billion

Walden University - $9.8 billion;

DeVry - $82 billion;

Capella University - $8 billion;

Strayer University - $6.7 billion

Kaplan University - $6.7 billion

The schools listed above have graduation rates in the low 20s compared
with mid-50s for the national average. In short, these places take the
students’ money but fail to retain them. The burden of very low graduation
rates and such high level of debt falls on students that come mostly from
working class backgrounds without the usual social/professional connections
that the upper middle class students attending private universities enjoy. As
more people find it difficult to afford the cost of public universities, they
will turn to the degree mills mostly online that will result in high debt and
low prospects for a rewarding career. The results of doing nothing with the
current neoliberal corporate model of higher education will be the following:

1.Higher student debt as many studies have indicated considering the six-fold rise between 2008
and 2016.

2.A New elite class will emerge of college graduates with advanced degrees that will become
increasingly unaffordable to the majority of American families.

3.Convergence of costs between public and private
universities will make higher education
increasingly unattainable for the majority of Americans.

4.Second and third tier low-quality for-profit schools will continue to prop up marketing themselves as the
alternative to a solid college education.

5.Blacks,
Hispanics and poor whites will be the worst to suffer the elitist
neoliberal system of higher education.

6.Lower number of students that attend four-year colleges, choosing instead the
bogus online universities and corporate institutions that are in essence degree
factories taking the money and providing very little in return.

7.Rich-poor gap widening in society owing to lack of opportunity for a college education as the
ticket to upward social mobility.

8.More jobs will be exported with the rise of the educational level in other
countries while the US will assume increasingly characteristics of a Third
World society.

9.A less educated citizenry may serve the interests of the political, financial
elites and those in academia and media whose careers are linked to the elites,
but it is a reflection of an autocratic society that deliberately prefers
backwardness for the majority of its citizens.

10.US competitiveness with the rest of the world will diminish over time, although this does
not appear to be a problem today because of the chronic “brain drain” from many
developing nations coming to the US.

America’s neoliberal model of higher education will not change because
the political economy is based on the neoliberal model and the entrenched
elites support it.Among those that view college students as customers and universities as a
business, there have been many who argue that higher education will become
obsolete in the future. Considering that higher education has existed for nealy 1000 years, an considering the need for an even more highly education population in our post-digital era, why would anyone even think to do away with colleges and universities?

Who needs Princeton, the University of Illinois,
or the California Community college system when you have computers and cell
phones at your ginertips? Besides, the employer will train the employee-candidates for the specific job.
This thinking assumes two things. First that technology is not a vehicle for
facilitating learning but a substitute for it and that technology can teach critical thinking even better than a university professor. Second, higher education is
narrowly defined by the specific perimeters of one’s work tasks, for as long as those last of course. Never mind
that a person entering the work force today will probably change not only jobs
but careers an average of seven times in a life time. The larger issue here
is the very narrow utilitarian definition of higher education that reduces human beings to extensions of the cell phones and laptops, all so that private sector can use them and dispose them just as readily as commodities.

There are Republicans, including Trump, that are interested
in privatizing Veterans affairs health care system, thus indicating the course
of neoliberal policies will continue not diminish. This privatization craze is
at the core of neoliberal ideological framework, and this is one reason they
oppose free tuition for public universities. The success of higher education in
Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, among some of European countries
offering college-free tuition, as well as Brazil and Argentina means nothing to
the neoliberal defenders of the system. Only a crisis deeper and wider in
society would bring about change in higher education and that will come with the
next inevitable contracting economic cycle that may be much deeper and longer
lasting than the Great Recession of 2008.

Monday, 2 May 2016

Known mostly for The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996) Samuel Huntington, like Francis Fukuyama (End of History and the Last Man, 1992),
caught the interest of apologists of Western capitalism’s triumph over Soviet
Communism during the 1990s and early 2000s. The quest to articulate a unifying
theory that explained the demise of the Cold War ‘bi-polar world order’ based
on the two superpowers and the emergence of the new multi-polar order led many
Western scholars right back to Cold War assumptions about the importance of
maintaining Western global hegemony in every area from determining the balance
of power to the political economy.

This became especially important after 9/11 when the
US institutionalized a counter-terrorism regime with Homeland Security, followed
by a US-NATO war against Afghanistan and US war in Iraq. A permanent global war
on terror, that replaced the old Cold War became the new rationale for
perpetuating Pax Americana despite the realities of a US economy that could not
possibly sustain such costs in the absence of downward socioeconomic mobility
for its middle class and an unwinnable campaign focused on military solution to
a political problem.

If jihadists carrying out unconventional attacks
against US and its allies were the new enemies instead of Communists, then the
US and its allies needed to construct a new ideological justification for an
imperial reach. In this respect, a number of scholars, including Huntington
provided the ideological ammunition Washington needed.Because globalization under neoliberal
policies had been in effect already since the Reagan administration, the only
question was to forge domestic and international political and a modicum of
popular consensus for such policies.

At the same time, however, there was the question of
the degree to which developing nations would be able to develop economically
and democratize politically under a world order of Western imperial hegemony
carrying out neoliberal policies to accommodate large capital at home and
existing as well as new foreign investment. Globalization apologists promised
that neo-liberalism would deliver these goals for the world, while at the same
time they threw their support behind the war on terror as though it is just
another conventional war with soldiers in a defined geographic location rather
than dispersed in more than fifty countries.

This essay briefly examines how “Modernization theory”
and the “Third Wave Democracy” thesis explain the evolution of the world
political economy and how the empirical evidence in developing nations do not
support the theory. I will analyze the inherent contradictions between the West
publicly pledging to modernize and democratize the world when history has
demonstrated that its imperial policies preclude both development and
democratization. The essay concludes with the question of the degree to which
modernization theory and the “Third Wave” democracy thesis explain the decline
of democracy in the Western World and the concomitant decline of the middle
class as the popular base of bourgeois democracy. In the interest of full
disclosure, the theoretical framework of my scholarly work is based in part is
the dependency school of thought and the structuralist interpretations usually
associated with the UN Commission on Latin America.(1)

The “Third Wave” and the Modernization Theory as “Cold War Democracy”

Huntington’s, The
Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1993) analyzes the transition from authoritarianism to 'democracy' in Portugal, Spain and
Greece during the mid-1970s, in Latin America, Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan
during the 1980s, and Eastern Europe after the Soviet bloc in the 1990s. The
study is a theoretical attempt to analyze global trends and to attribute credit
to the success of America’s transformation policy applied across the world
since the end of WWII. Transformation policy as a means of integrating the
world economically, politically and geopolitically under the aegis of the US as
the Western superpower in a struggle against its rivals Russia and China marks
its triumph at the time that Huntington was writing his “Third Wave” study.

The “Third Wave” thesis as an integral part of the post-WWII Modernization
theory developed in the US amid the early Cold War to justify Pax Americana’s
global reach. In practice, US global reach has precluded democratization and
development in periphery countries because of their economically dependent and
politically and militarily subservient relationship with the advanced
capitalist countries led by the US under a patron-client integration model. Even
in traditional societies where Islam dominates such as those in the Middle East
and North Africa had uprisings during the first half of the 2010s, the chance
of their success was severely limited. This is because of opposition from the
domestic elites including the military and the small capital class linked to
Western interests, but also the US and its northwest European partners
determined to impose their economic, political and military influence and deny
national and popular sovereignty that would entail greater autonomy and less
dependence on the West. (2)

It is important to emphasize that the definition of democracy by those
embracing the “Third Wave” and Modernization theories is based on assumptions
of American-style democracy equated with socioeconomic inequality and marked
absence of social justice. This has been evident in the US socioeconomic
structure historically with problems ranging from institutional racism and
xenophobia to gender inequality, from the wealthy elites financing elected
officials to political party establishment conducting policy to perpetuate an
unequal and socially unjust society. (3)

Of course, this is not the case only in the US but across the developed
nations where capitalism is equated with bourgeois democracy where citizens
select among the competing elites presented to them by the established
political parties inexorably linked to the socioeconomic elites. This is the
position that Joseph Schumpeter argued in Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy (1942) where he advanced the “elite model of participatory
democracy”.

American and European scholars conducting research during the Cold War
accepted without much criticism the Modernization theory using to explain the
transition from traditional preindustrial societies to the modern industrial
world. After all, if the non-Western areas did not industrialize and adopt
Western liberal-bourgeois institutions it must be because the obstacles to
development and democracy are internal and not because the West imposed
colonial control, or divided them into spheres of influence. One reason that
Modernization theory became popular immediately after WWII was that Westerners
were encouraged by the defeat of the Axis Powers and the decolonization
movements that followed after the end of the war.Condemning Stalinist Russia and its
satellites, the same scholars, and along with them journalists and politicians
assumed that democratization flows from the modernization development model,
thus equating democracy with industrial and finance capitalism and its social order
of inequality.

Like William McNeill (The Rise of the West, 1964) who embraced
the modernization theory, Huntington believed that the different parts of the
world democratize as they modernize in stages. This is a theory that assumes
their integration into the American-dominated world economy, political and
military network whose goal throughout the Cold War was to bring down the
Soviet Union and perpetuate Pax Americana. Walt Rostow (Economic Stages of Growth, 1960) was an advocate of modernization and
implicitly the “waves” theory that Huntington later articulated. Influential
not just during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations throughout the second
half of the 20th century among politicians, Rostow’s thesis was part
of the mainstream in media and academia.

Like the paternalistic
assumptions of Modernization theory with its categorical political goal,
Rostow’s stages of growth theory implied that development entails diffusion
emanating from the core (advanced capitalist countries) to the periphery (less
developed); in other words, an endorsement of imperialism justified in the name
of anti-Communism and a single path to development and democracy. Included in
Rostow’s stages of economic growth and Huntington’s 'Third Wave' thesis is the
transition from traditional society to democracy only in theory.

In reality, the transition has
been from corrupt clientist authoritarian regimes to corrupt semi-democratic
ones under integration into the US-dominated economic and geopolitical global
framework. In all cases without exception, countries falling into the “Third Wave”
and Modernization theory framework in their political institutions became even
more thoroughly dependent economically. This is as true for Latin America under
US hegemony since the Spanish-American War as for Africa, Asia and Eastern and
southeastern Europe under northwest European dominant influence.Post-Cold War regional economic blocs have
been dominated by the US, German-dominated Europe Union, and Japan and more
recently China competing with the core countries in the world economy for
spheres of influence and market share. (4)

If we accept the Modernization and Third Wave theories, then we accept the
assumptions of Joseph Schumpeter (“Democratic
Method”, 1947 and Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy) that democracy does not entail popular sovereignty
and social justice, but it is simply an institutional arrangement for arriving
at political decisions – presumably through consensus by the socioeconomic and
political elites in which individuals acquire power to determine who captures
the popular vote. In other words, this is a top down process not very different
than corporations competing for a consumer base where the consumer is able to
choose corporation A vs. B.

Even if we accept this definition and Huntington’s argument that the “First
Wave” of ‘minimal democracy’ in the 19th century to the second wave
after WWII and the defeat of the Axis Powers, elements of authoritarianism
existed within Western Democracies, especially the US that excluded minorities
from the institutional mainstream. Unless one invokes the doctrine of “American Exceptionalism” both in
foreign affairs as well as US apartheid practices with regard to Native
Americans and Africa-Americans, democracy explained by Modernization theory
provides a distorted picture of what has actually taken place throughout
history.(5)

Studies carried out by scholars and institutions such as the World Bank on
the correlation between high income level countries and democracy, and low-income
level countries and authoritarianism throughout the Cold War contend that the
catalyst to democracy is a viable middle class, not social justice and
equality. Of course, it is possible to have an ascendant middle class without
democracy as has been in the case of China, thus proving the “middle
class-democracy” correlation is not necessarily true. (6)

It is interesting to note that the same studies linked traditional
societies, especially Islamic ones where religion was at the core of the value
system and institutional structure, as less compatible with democracy while
secular societies much more so.Western scholars assume compatibility between Christianity and democracy
while rejecting the same when it comes to Islam and Eastern religions, despite
the empirical reality if India where Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are the main
religions. (7)

When it comes to the
most populous Muslim nations of Indonesia, Western critics praise the
compatibility of Islam and democracy because the country has embraced globalization
and Westernization. Along similar lines, the West has historically embraced
Turkey, a NATO member and candidate for the EU, despite its Muslim heritage and
traditions.

The Third Wave, Arab Revolution and
Counter-Revolution

At the cultural level and to a degree social level, there has been greater
'pluralism' in societies that transitioned during the 'Third Wave' because of
decolonization following WWII. However, this has not translated to greater
popular sovereignty and social justice comparable to what the Scandinavian
countries enjoy, and after the austerity of 2010 there has been a decline both
in democracy and living standards in countries that were part of the “Third
Wave Democracy” trend.

During the “Third Wave” with Portugal’s Carnation Revolution 1974, women and
minorities acquired more rights; human rights became a basic component of
government, freedom of the press and assembly was a reality. From the 1980s
until the Great recession of 2008 there was upward social mobility in southern Europe.
Largely because living standards needed to be raised for the periphery
countries to qualify entranced into the euro zone after under Maastricht Treaty conditions as established in 1992, northwest European countries adopted an
interdependent integration model rather than the patron-client model the US
pursued in its relationship with Mexico under NAFTA.(8)

After the austerity that the EU and IMF imposed on the periphery in 2010,
it also imposed the patron-client model of integration that reduced the
southern and eastern European members of the zone into subservient status
serving the interests of the northwest core. This new model has meant decline
not just in living standards but in social mobility for college graduates most
of whom are unable to find employment in their fields of study if at all;
weaker welfare state and trade unions, and weaker democratic institutions as
there has been a transition from the welfare state to corporate welfare under
the advocacy of neoliberals that includes the IMF and the European Central Bank.
The benefits of the “Third Wave” in the periphery countries of Europe accrued
mostly to those in the upper income groups and not across the board, and
certainly there were not sustainable as the post-2008 recession crisis has proved.
(9)

Whether part of the “Third Wave” or not, developing nations have compromised
their sovereignty by surrendering to the globalized market economy to a much greater
degree than they had in some cases under authoritarian regimes that tended to
support 'national capitalism' more than international capitalism. This is as
true of Eastern Europe as it is of Latin America. The people of Portugal,
Greece and Spain, all previously under authoritarian regimes that were part of
the 'Third Wave' continue to elect their national leaders who only follow and
execute policies in accordance with the rules of the market economy and under
considerable pressure from the US and EU directly or indirectly through the
IMF, World Bank, OECD, European Central Bank.

To what degree do Portugal, Greece and Spain enjoy national sovereignty
when the monetary and fiscal policy that impact living standards and result in
social engineering comes as a result of what the IMF, central banks, and the
domestic and foreign financial elites? The ballot box gives the illusion of
freedom of political choice and popular sovereignty when all aspects of the
citizen’s life are surrendered to an institutional structure under the control
of the financial elites whose interests the political class serves. The national
economy and public finances are surrendered to national and global finance
capitalism that operates with comprador bourgeoisie at the national level. This
is especially true in Greece, one of the “Third Wave” countries reduced to a virtual
semi-colony under IMF-German imposed austerity since 2010. (10)

If the 'Third Wave' did not result in the type of social justice that one would
associate with a Norwegian model of democracy but rather with a Latin American
one, why would the imaginary 'Fourth Wave' be any different taking place now in
the Middle East, especially after the failed uprisings that NATO countries and
regional players like Saudi Arabia subverted as part of a counter-revolution
that followed? Furthermore, the suggestion that modernization can come solely
or primarily as a result of diffusion of 'ideas' from the West to the rest of
the world is in many respects a reflection of Western imperialism, merely another version of Kipling’s White Man’s Burden thesis.

The assumption among many
Westerners arguing that Muslim countries are or ought to be undergoing
democratization is based on the Western model of “liberal bourgeois” democracy
under the neoliberal economic model that favors international finance capital. Even
the “Third Wave” is not based on assumptions of social, economic, and political
equality or grassroots democracy, any more than it is based on self-sustaining
horizontal economic and social development. Considering the assumptions of “Third
Wave” about democracy of limited popular and national sovereignty, then the Afro-Arab
Spring uprisings were probably more successful than it may appear on the
surface. (11)

There are several hundred books dealing with Afro-Arab Spring uprisings, as
well as counter-revolution leading to even greater political instability,
polarization and socioeconomic inequality than before. This is not only the
case in Libya and Egypt, but across all countries that tried to have genuine
grassroots revolts. Most authors agree these were indeed unfinished revolutions
and subverted by forces other than the grassroots participants who were
themselves ideologically and politically divided on what kind of regime they
wanted. The democratization wave was never given a chance to evolve because
domestic elites, neighboring states among them Saudi Arabia fearing any
spillover impact of political change as well as the US and its European allies
played a role in undermining the popular movements through various means
including NGOs posing as friendly democratic entities. (12)

The grassroots movement to democratize Egypt failed
after former army chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi muscled his way into power. Despite
the veneer of the electoral process, the reality since 2013 has been repression
of the Muslim Brotherhood and secular Egyptians wishing popular sovereignty
rather than a military-dominated state. Nevertheless, President al-Sisi insists
his government is democratic, despite ruling by decree. Western governments
back him despite Human Rights Watch and other independent organizations
condemning the regimes as repressive. Not much different than Mubarak’s
authoritarian regime, Sisi is following an existing pattern of cronyism.
Because Sisi has cooperated with the West on geopolitical issues and is not
confrontational toward Israel like Iran, and because he has worked with the IMF
and is open to foreign capital and neoliberal policies that have resulted in
sharp cuts in subsidies and other welfare state measures, Western politicians,
media and pundits view Egypt more favorably as democratic than Iran that has
only recently agreed to economic integration with the West and cooperation on
the nuclear weapons development issue; this despite the fact that Iran has been
fighting against al-Qaeda and ISIS. (13)

Regardless of how Western powers view social movements in Islamic countries
and how they try to manipulate them so they could exert hegemonic influence, Islam
as a coherent ideological force is an integral part, but not the only one, of
societal issues intertwined with the faith, especially in Egypt where the
Islamic Brotherhood played a key role. This was also the case in Yemen, Tunisia
and everywhere where grassroots movements took place during Arab Spring. In the
absence of a secular political ideology, religious doctrine is what the masses
rally around, Islam played a catalytic role, although various religious
factions – sectarian politics especially Sunni vs. Shiite - were engaged in a
struggle for dominant influence and control.

The Arab Spring uprisings were heterogeneous in their ideological orientation,
as much as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that the Shiite clergy eventually
dominated and used to create an Islamic Republic. Precisely because of the
heterogeneous nature of opposition to authoritarian regimes in Islamic
countries reflecting largely the urban-secular middle class vs. the rural and
some urban traditional masses clinging to Islam as the unifying force in
society it became easier for the armed forces as in Egypt or comprador
bourgeois class linked to foreign interests to prevail over the disparate
masses. The question for the advocates of Modernization theory is whether
revolution inspired by Islam intended to bring about social justice to society
fits the theory, a question that a number of scholars raise as they try to
place Arab Spring into a theoretical framework. (14)

By August 2013 the counterrevolution was in full swing with the backing of
the US northwest Europe, and reactionary Arab regimes. In Egypt the
duly-elected government of Mohammad Morsi was toppled and the Raaba Massacre
took place resulting in more than 1000 people dead all in an effort to crush
the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power. Although this massacre was far worse
than Tiananman Square (1989), there was hardly the US or European outcry
against it because the West and its regional Middle East allies did not want
democracy in Egypt any more than they did in the region as a whole. Whereas the
Western media, politicians, pundits, and various apologists of Western
capitalism vociferously condemned the Chinese government for crushing
democratic protests in 1989, the reaction in 2013 by the same sources was one
of outrage for the massacre but support for law and order against Egyptian
democratic protesters because they Muslim Brotherhood elements viewed with
suspicion as potential jihadists. (15)

Using the “jihadist” theme, implicitly intertwined with the war on terror,
as the explanation for siding with the new elites that emerged from
counterrevolution, analysts argued that there must be an alternative to jihad
as the opposition force to regimes – authoritarian or elected - closely
integrated with Western interests and policies.Crony capitalism that existed before Arab Spring continued after the
dust settled, just as the Western influence that existed before remained very
much alive in geopolitical and economic domains. Post-Islamism
manifesting itself in the rise of urbanization and youths embracing the new
communications technology as a means of grassroots organizing and consciousness-raising
was just one factor in the revolts during the first half of the 2010s. This
does not mean that there is a shortage of hypocrisy on the part of leaders in
the opposition embracing the uprising in the name of Islam any more than on the
part of rulers claiming to defend the faith. Piety has its limits when it comes
to political goals as much in the Islamic Middle East, as in the Christian
West. Nevertheless, there is no stigma of “jihadist terrorism” attached to
Christianity and Judaism. Whereas the identity of a Muslim emanates from the
faith as well as the nation-state, social status and lesser factors, the
identity of a Christian in France or US is rooted in multiple institutions
mostly secular, that may or may not include nation-state and faith.

Accepting some of the theoretical assumptions of the Modernization theory, French-Moroccan
author Rachid Benzine emerged in Europe as a representative of the Arab Spring
generation to articulate the events and dynamics in North Africa and the Middle
East in the early 21st century. Following a long-standing tradition
started by Bernard Lewis, Fazlur Rahman, and Edward Said who was a critic of
conventional scholarship, Benzine argued that the failure of the Arab world,
and more widely the Islamic world, to undergo an intellectual revolution
(Renaissance and Enlightenment like Europe), invariably linked to social
development, owed to a 'misreading' of the Koran and in failing to recognize
and respond to specific historical situations? (16)

As a traditional society
that has not undergone a Renaissance, a Scientific Revolution, an Age of Reason
and Industrial Revolution, and in addition it has been subject to foreign
conquest that imposed monocultural economic structures (export-oriented
economies), the Arab world finds itself confronting the contradictions of
wanting to preserve its cultural identity on the one hand, keeping up with the
western world on the other in order to lessen exploitation of its resources and
labor, and strengthen national sovereignty, while finding it impossible to
avoid integration into the world-system of the market economy which entails
dependency at some level. Embracing Modernization theory as a framework to
understand Arab Spring in essence suggests trying to fit Islamic institutions
and society into a secularized Western-dominated world is not revolutionary,
but actually conservative.

Is Egypt and the
entire Islamic worldpart of a 'Fourth Wave'
toward democracy and development merely another dream designed for the convenience
of those who want to make sense of events and be optimistic that the
modernization theory works - equating modernization with Western concepts
of bourgeois capitalism. 'Transformation policy' that the US began implementing
after WWII as a means to integrate the rest of the world into the global system
of capitalist institutions was inevitable not just for Egypt, but the entire
Arab world, as the counterrevolutions proved once the dust settled and regime
change took hold. (17)

In the absence of a
regional (Middle Eastern-North African) economic bloc, in the absence of some
revival of Nasser's dream for Afro-Arab solidarity with a multilateral foreign
economic policy as leverage in the international arena, Egypt along with the
rest of the Islamic world will remain thoroughly integrated into the capitalist
system as it was under Mubarak who had set up his own fiefdom and made billions
in the process. The only question is what leverage does Egypt or any Islamic
countries have?As much the US, as the
Europeans and Chinese demand that Islamic nations conform to the rules of the
marketplace, to the IMF and World Bank, to the World Trade Organization (WTO),
and that they observe all of its foreign treaty and other obligations; exactly
as the US demanded from the Egyptian army under Sisi so that the foreign aid
can continue pouring in under Obama, despite human rights violations.(18)

Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya,
Algeria, and the entire Arab world, will remain Western dependencies in most
cases worse off than before Arab Spring, with the possible exception of Tunisia
despite more than 6000 Tunisians joining ISIS in a nation with about 16%
unemployment rate and per capita GDP average of just under $11,400 or 65% of
the world’s average in PPP terms. External dependency on the core countries entails
few changes in the status quo throughout the Arab world; merely enough to
satisfy those that have fought to end authoritarianism in some countries, while
disappointing to the vast majority.

While it would be a great
development to have greater social justice, more respect for women and broader
observance of human rights in general, the trend for the Middle East is
westernization through commercialism - consumer products and services, pop
cultural influences, telecommunications, media and technology - which entails
influencing the value system so that gradually Islamic countries becoming more
like Turkey that seeks full membership in the European Union and Indonesia
inviting foreign capital investment. This subtle form of infringement on Muslim
sovereignty to which Arabs object for economic, political and
cultural/religious reasons comes slowly, and it contributes to popular
uprisings. Along with the broader recognition that the Muslim world is made up
mostly of poor people, while the Christian West is prosperous, immersed in
materialistic, hedonistic values and lifestyles, there needs to be a
realization that the Christian West has been profiting off the Muslim Middle
East since the Treaty of Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774). The closely
integrated globalized economy entails withering cultural identities and that is
the case in the Muslim world where just beneath the relative calm a new wave of
social uprisings is brewing and will explode eventually.

Undermining
Self-determination and Popular Sovereignty in Traditional Societies

According to the Modernization theory obstacles to democracy and progress are
all internal, resting within national borders. The US government, politicians,
media and pundits have been claiming ever since Wilson’s Missionary Diplomacy
(denying recognition to Mexico and Latin American government if their policies
were antithetical to American interests) that the goal is to spread freedom and
democracy throughout the world. The record of US foreign policy especially
toward developing countries since the Spanish-American War has demonstrated
that the US accomplishes the exact opposite of the stated goal because
democracy in less developed countries minimizes US economic and geopolitical
influence in those countries. As the following list of CIA operations that
undermined democracy indicates, the US was hardly a promoter of democracy as
the advocates of Modernization theory and those claiming the only goal is
freedom and democracy claim.

1. Italy 1948 elections sabotaged by
CIA to make sure that the pro-US Christian Democrat Party;

The above list includes only the most blatant cases of US intervention and
does not list military interventions or countries where the US backed
authoritarian regimes, including South Africa under apartheid regimes.(19)

Even in cases where there have not been counterinsurgency operations but
direct or indirect military intervention, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, from Iraq
to Afghanistan, from Libya to Syria, the net result is greater destabilization
under a new type of authoritarian regime. Just two days after Vice President
Joe Biden visited Iraq to announce an additional 250 US troops, mass
demonstrators stormed the fortified Green Zone on 30 April 2016 in a show of
popular anger against the corrupt, unrepresentative and ineffective regime that
the US set up. Although these were backers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who
has been calling for sweeping reforms, the reality is that US invasion and
occupation left the country utterly devastated and it will take decades for it
to recover, let alone become free and democratic as the US government argued it
was there to deliver.Despite
Washington’s shallow claims that its goal is freedom and democracy, its actual goal
is economic, political and economic integration under American aegis in an era
of intense global competition owing to China’s ascendancy. (20)

Considering that there has been a long-standing policy of subverting
national and popular sovereignty abroad because it clashes US and more broadly
Western corporate and geopolitical interests, how do we reconcile the
Modernization theory with the empirical reality of American foreign policy
record? Under the aegis of the US, Wall
Street, and international finance capital, IMF austerity programs since the
early 1950s have been responsible throughout the developing countries of
undermining democracy by lowering living standards for the working class and
the middle class. If external economic and financial intervention thwarts
economic development and democracy, how can advocates of Modernization theory
argue that all obstacles to development are internal? (21)

Because Modernization theory advocates accept the capitalist political
economy as “natural”, they do not analyze how austerity policies result in
downward socioeconomic mobility and polarized sociopolitical conditions that
either takes place under authoritarian or semi-authoritarian conditions or
result in such regimes. IMF austerity is intended to concentrate capital among
the domestic elites and foreign corporations, thus resulting in diminished democratic
commitment of regimes that carry it out. In the process, the middle class and
workers become disillusioned and often turn to right wing or left wing
political parties or movements, abandoning the bourgeois consensus of the liberal
center. This is as much the case in the EU’s periphery countries since 2010 as
it has been the case in developing nations from the 1950s to the present.(22)

In addition to monetarist austerity that results in further capital
concentration and weaker middle class and working class, the neoliberal
policies of weakening the welfare state to strengthen corporate welfare while
strengthening defense have also accounted for increased political orientation
toward the politics of illiberal democracy. In an integrated world dominated by
core countries led by the US as the world’s largest military power compelling
both allies and foes to spend more on defense that deprives the civilian
economy of resources it is simply naïve to claim that the sources of
undemocratic regimes are archaic traditions and non-Western religions when it
is in fact Western governments and the considerable power that multinational
corporations enjoy over governments. (23)

Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Democracy in Core Countries

The triumph of the capitalist West over the Communist bloc coinciding with
the global economic ascendancy of China has actually delivered less democracy,
greater socioeconomic and political polarization, fewer human rights, and
decline in social justice under the neoliberal model of development. How do we
then reconcile the Modernization theory that assumes a Hegelian model of steady
economic development and democratization under capitalism and the “Third Wave”
that assumes developing countries emulate the Western political economic model
when the same is showing very clear signs of fracture?Even if one accepts Modernization theory and Huntington’s
“Third Wave Democracy” as theoretical frameworks to explain development and
evolution toward bourgeois democracy, how do we explain the decline of
democracy in the advanced capitalist countries since the end of the Cold War? On
the 25th anniversary of Fukuyama’s “The End of History”, The Atlantic published an article
arguing that “history isn’t over, and neither liberalism nor democracy is
ascendant”. (24)

As much in Europe as in the US, right-wing populist
demagogues are challenging bourgeois political elites that come from the
business elites, or become wealthy in the process and join the business elites
in the pursuit of neoliberal policies that concentrate wealth? While a handful
of billionaires own most of the world’s wealth, the corporate owned media has
moved to the right as much in the US as in Europe, paying only lip service to
political correctness regarding racism, xenophobia, while hammering at the
rights of workers and all issues pertaining to social justice while defending
neo-liberalism. This has in turn emboldened extreme right wing groups whose
differences are not so distinct from mainstream conservative political parties.(25)

According to a State Department public opinion poll in
2000, Europeans and Americans generally favored globalization.By 2014, things had changed largely because
the Great Recession (2008) resulted in massive income transfer from the middle
class and workers and into the pockets of the top one percent income earners. A
Pew Research poll in 2014 found that only 17% of Americans believed that (free)
trade leads to higher wages, and only 28% believed that foreign companies buying
US companies was good for the country, thus reflecting a sharp rise in economic
nationalist sentiment. (26)

Anti-globalization from the right in the US as well as
Europe comes in the form of opposition to trade agreements favoring large
multinational corporations at the expense of the national economy. Just as the
right wing is split on the issue of globalization, it is so split on the issue
of regional military blocs, especially NATO and the burden of its costs. The
neo-isolationist foreign policy agenda of a number of Republicans in the US, including
Donald Trump reflects exactly this trend. Although it is unlikely the US will
isolate itself from military blocs any more than it will retreat from
globalization despite the costs to its public debt and shrinking middle class,
these matters will only become more pronounced as Asia assumes an increasingly
dominant role in the world economy and outcries about costs and benefits become
louder. (27)

With a history of fascism and authoritarianism, Europe
has extremist political groups that emerged on anti-Islam, anti-foreign,
anti-progressive platforms designed to attract the masses guided by fear,
ignorance, and insecurity about the future as well as assertion of cultural/ethnic
identity myths. Right wing populist demagogues tend to become increasingly part
of the mainstream. With each cyclical economic crisis that leaves people
questioning the present and longing for 'the good old days' of 'traditionalism'
when the masses obeyed authority and the social order worked just great as far
as the elites were concerned, Europe and the US will become more right wing
because this is where the media and the elites will lead the masses. The debate
not just among Americans but also European political elites regarding
isolationism and economic nationalism reflects a concern that globalization
increasingly favors China and other non-Western countries rather than the West
that enjoyed global economic hegemony from the end WWII until the end of the Cold
War. (28)

Many in the West were caught up in the enthrallment of the moment when the
Soviet bloc came down and George H. W. Bush proclaimed the New World Order in
his State of the Union address. The media and pundits were predicting the “end
of history” and the end of ideology. Twenty-five years after Bush’s New World
Order speech, these same people cannot explain why Europe and the US have been
taking a turn toward the politics of the “illiberal democracy” and a
quasi-authoritarian system has emerged. Why is it that so many scholars are
convinced that not just the US has lapsed into a surveillance regime spying on
its own citizens and increasingly relying on police state methods that violate
the Constitution, but Europe has become much more rightist in its ideological
and political orientation? (29)

Much is defaulted to the ‘war on terror’ and Muslim refugees that the ‘war
on terror’. Some blame the interventionist Western foreign policy toward Syria,
Iraq and the entire Muslim World at a time that the Western economies were less
competitive with those of Asia. As much in Eastern Europe as in Western that
claims greater tolerance and democratic commitment, public opinion polls
indicate a sharp rise in xenophobia directed especially at Muslim migrants and
viewing Islam in general as a threat. Perceptions are not much different in the
US especially among Republicans voters considering the media’s demonization of
Muslims as the new existential threat that replaced Communism.(30)

Waning of democracy in a
socio-politically polarized society is a reality throughout the Western World,
thus obviating not just the “End of History” thesis that so many have criticized
but also the Modernization theory and Huntington’s “waves of democracy” thesis.
In the next contracting economic cycle, there will be further erosion of what
people associate with 'bourgeois democracy' and a greater tilt toward
authoritarianism concealed beneath the facade of democracy. What happens to the
social fabric if during the next contracting cycle Western democracies will
need to spend more than half of the GDP to bailout corporations while still
maintaining high defense spending? What signal does this send to the rest of
the world about the Western political economy and institutions? Western
democracy as the world knew it in the second half of the 20th century is
rapidly sinking toward quasi-authoritarianism while maintaining a façade of
freedom and democracy. (31)

Will greater social justice and popular sovereignty evolve
as a result of the contradictions that develop within the market economy and
the emerging social structure to which such a political economy gives birth?
Social discontinuity is unfolding before our eyes so slowly so cannot see it. All
empirical evidence indicates that the neoliberal model is leading toward
varieties of authoritarianism. The irrelevant vacuous theoretical rhetoric of
the Modernization theory, Third Wave Democracy, End of History are intended to
obfuscate the empirical realities of peoples’ material lives when history has
proved Joseph Schumpeter correct. Democracy is simply an electoral process
where citizens have the right to select competing elites whose goal is to
perpetuate their economic, social and political privileges.

21.Shaun Ferguson, “Diagnosing Constraints to Industrialization in the Arab
World” and Alfredo Saad-Silho, “Transcending Neoliberalism through Pro-Poor and
Democratic Economic Development Strategies” in Development Challenges and Solutions After Arab Spring, ed. Ali
Kadri, 2016).

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."